LUCKY BALDWIN.

Otago Witness, 5 December 1900, Page 40

LUCKY BALDWIN.

No man probably has achieved more notoriety on the racecourses of America than E. J. Baldwin, says an American scribe, who has always rejoiced in the appellation of "Lucky" Baldwin. Baldwin's name and colours (black, with red Maltese cross) have been by-words for the past 20 years from the Atlantic to the Pacific slope. Essentially a self-made man, always trading, and always keenly alive to catch on to a profitable investment, lie made money by millions, and quickly as he made it invested it again. At one time a miner, he has passed through every phase of the game of life, and once was reputed enormously wealthy. He owned a glorious tract of land in the St. Gabriel Valley, in California, 50,000 acres in extent, which has often been referred to as the garden sport of the earth. There he established a breeding stud, the Rey El Sonta Anita, on an extravagant scale, and bred all the horses which bore his colours. You have two of his breed running in England at the present day, Rey El Santa Anita and Americus. The success which invariably attended his colotirs gained for him his patronymic "Lucky." Everything he touched turned to gold. ' About the year 1695 his luck apparently forsook him. He became land ppor, owning as he did vast tracts of country. His enormous hotel, Baldwin's Hotel in San Francisco, was burnt to the ground in 1898, without a penny of insurance on it. His horses were no longer victorious as of old, xnd it was said of the old man that he was "flat broke." It is hard to keep a man with energy such as his down. Despite his years — he must be well on in the sixties — he recently sjtarted out afresh for the goldfields of AJsska 4 a.nd has, noj£ returned fio^ Cp,pe

Nome with the proofs of a hundred claims in his pocket, which it is said will set Mm afloat once more on the tide of prosperity, and clear his land of mortgages. Some day the story of his life, with its ups and downs and vicissitudes, will be written, and form a book of the greatest interest. He certainly is a wonder.